Grief, Responding to Grief, and Miscarriage; Resilience in Life and Leadership Episode 052

Stephanie has a raw conversation about grief, responding to grief, and her miscarriages. After several miscarriages, Stephanie went through many times of grief, in which people would try to say words of "comfort and wisdom," which usually fell flat. How do you respond to someone who is grieving? What do you say, or not say? Stephanie shares her thoughts on these very questions.

Everyone has resilience, but what does that mean and how to we use it in life and leadership? Join Stephanie Olson, expert in resiliency and trauma, every week as she talks to other experts living lives of resilience. Stephanie also shares her own stories of addictions, disordered eating, domestic and sexual violence, abandonment, and trauma; and shares the everyday struggles and joys of everyday life. As a wife, mom, and CEO she gives commentaries, and, sometimes a few rants, to shed light on what makes a person resilient. So, if you have experienced adversity in life in any way, and you want to learn how to better lead your family, your workplace, and, well, your life, this podcast is for you!

https://stephanieolson.com

INSPIRE your team to LEAD WITH SUCCESS and MOTIVATE others with Stephanie bringing 20+ years of speaking experience. If you need to EMPOWER, ENGAGE, and EDUCATE your people-Book Stephanie as your speaker today!

https://www.stephanieolson.com/ask-stephanie-to-speak

Everyone has resilience, but what does that mean, and how do we use it in life and leadership? Join Stephanie Olson, an expert in resiliency and trauma, every week as she talks to other experts living lives of resilience. Stephanie also shares her own stories of addictions, disordered eating, domestic and sexual violence, abandonment, and trauma, and shares the everyday struggles and joys of everyday life. As a wife, mom, and CEO she gives commentaries and, sometimes, a few rants to shed light on what makes a person resilient. So, if you have experienced adversity in life in any way and want to learn how to better lead your family, your workplace, and, well, your life, this podcast is for you!

https://stephanieolson.com

Transcript

Stephanie Olson: 0:00

Thank you for listening. Please share with anyone you think will benefit from this podcast. Hello, and welcome to resilience in life and leadership. I am Stephanie Olson, aka Wonder Woman, and super glad to be here with you today. I am a speaker on things like trauma in the workplace, multi generational conversations in the workplace, but also just amazing inspirational stuff for women. And you can check it out at Stephanie olson.com. I would love to speak at your event. And I want to talk a little bit about grief. And probably more accurately than just grief itself. But how we respond to grief. I think that's really important. We can make a difference in somebody's life. But I think sometimes we think we need to say something special, something profound. We need to react in a certain way when somebody is grieving. And here's the deal. We don't sometimes we can do more damage than good. I recently, LSA I recently, it wasn't recent at all. Or I'll say, hey, the other day, and it was like two years ago, so just bear with me. But our first pregnancy. So not exactly recently, let's see my oldest daughter's 21. And this would have been before her. So you do the math. My first pregnancy, my husband and I were just type a people. Okay, we still are, we had plans, we knew exactly what we were going to do. We had it all put in place, hey, we're going to get married, then we're going to have baby number one. And you know, that's going to be this gender and baby number two, God, we will let you know what we're going to do. You just do the rest of the work. That was kind of our mindset, because we thought that's how it worked. I mean, we knew the details, right? But, but we didn't ever think about the fact that we might have issues having children. And so we got pregnant right away. That was never an issue. We got pregnant. And things were going well. We were excited. We had been married for just a little over a year. And so we knew we were on track. And when I was five months pregnant, we went into the doctor's office. And the doctor, you know, did the regular check with the Doppler machine and listen to the heartbeat. And so she grabbed the Doppler and started listening. And it was clear she didn't hear anything. And of course, we didn't hear anything. And so she said, You know, sometimes these cords are bad. Let me get a new one. Okay. So she did, and she came back and listened nothing. So she sent us to get an ultrasound. Now, even at this point, I'm thinking, there's nothing wrong. We're just, you know, go we we've never done this before. We had no idea. So we went to the hospital. And we went in to have an ultrasound now. The ultrasound tech said nothing, said nothing the entire time first ultrasound I've ever had. And she was very stoic, you know, doing her thing, never said anything. Then she left. And somebody came back. I can't remember if it was her or if it was somebody else. But they said, your doctor wants you to come back to the office. Well, at this point, I was scared. But again, it didn't really occur to me that I would have lost the baby. We went back to the office. And the doctor told us that we had indeed lost our baby. It was a Tuesday it was December 8 I remember it vividly. And because I was five months pregnant, I had to go into the hospital to actually deliver the baby because he was too big to you know, do it any other way. So we went to the hospital. And of course we're on the ward of have babies who are being delivered and the joyous sounds and all of the things. And we were put in the very end, and there was a white rose on our door to indicate that we had lost a baby. Well, I delivered the baby that night. And I will, I'll tell you before we went there, I we stopped at my parents, because they wanted to, you know, give us dinner and help us get over there. And my mom played a song. For me, that was really, really special to me growing up in high school called he never failed me yet. And it says, I will sing up his mercies every day, every hour, he gives me power, I will sing and I'll praise him for all the joys and all the and I'm messing up the words. He is my God, and I'll serve Him no matter what the test, trust and never doubt. Jesus will always bring you out. He never failed me yet. And I literally recoiled at that song when she played it, because I thought, okay, yeah, you're failing me now. So that's not that's a problem. So we went to the doctor, I delivered this baby boy the size of my hand. I mean, it was surreal. And we got to hold them, we got to say goodbye. But we went home without a baby. And it was horrifying. Now, because this was my first baby, I had no idea. Will I ever get pregnant again? Do I can I not have babies and it was just a terrible situation. And at this point in time, and most of you know, I'm a recovering alcoholic, I was drinking. Now I didn't drink when I was pregnant. But you better believe when I got home, I started drinking again. And so alcohol kind of walked me through that grief and that pain. What was so difficult is that, of course, everyone knew I was pregnant, I was showing. And so then everybody knew that I had lost the baby. And people don't know what to say. Let me just tell you, if you don't know what to say, don't say anything. And really, even if you think you know what to say, don't say anything.

Unknown: 7:43

Except for I'm sorry, and how can I help you?

Stephanie Olson: 7:49

I had people say things to me, like, you know, I'm a singer. And they would say, hey, you'll get the song in your voice pretty soon or the song in your heart again. And I of course had people telling me I was God's will that, you know, that's what and none of those things were good to hear. Nor do I believe it was God's will for my baby to die. I do believe there is, you know, we are in a fallen world. And those things happen. And I don't think that God does that to us. There's no punishment. There's none of that. We just We just live in a fallen world. But people would either say something completely ridiculous or ignore the fact that it happened at all. I don't want to say anything. I don't want to say anything wrong. I don't want you to remember that you lost your baby. I'm not going to forget. I had one friend who came over and she sat down with me and she said, Whatever you need, I'm here to listen. I'm here to cry with you. I'm here to laugh. I'm here to do whatever you need. If you want to talk about it. Let's talk about it. If you don't, let's not. What would you like to do? That was the most healing thing anyone could have said? And I said absolutely. I want to talk about it. And I was able to show her the pictures and show her the blanket that he was on and all of those things. And it was amazing. That's what you do. Now, I did get pregnant again. We waited for two years because it was just so so difficult, waited for two years, and then we did get pregnant again. And I was terrified, because I had no idea what was going to happen again. I was still drinking stopped drinking when I was pregnant. And we had a completely uneventful pregnancy. We delivered a beautiful baby girl redhead, who was my oldest daughter and it was amazing and she was amazing and healthy and perfect. And it was wonderful. And so then we decided, hey, we're going to do this again, we're back on track. And we got pregnant again, after No, well was a little older, wasn't sadistic, and we got pregnant again and lost that baby. And again, I was drinking and drank that pain away. And it was horrible. I remember that was February 1, we found out. And it was an extremely painful time. Now, at this point, things are not going well on that front. We do switch doctors. And you know, I start to go to a specialist because I want to find out what's wrong, and know what's going on. And so in the meantime, I'd gotten sober, and started to work through that part of of my journey. And we got pregnant again. Now this is over a period of time. And we lost that baby. So third loss. We know we can get pregnant, we know we can have a baby. But clearly it's not working right now. The pregnancy doctor that we were working with determined that it was my lining, that was not thick enough. And he was going to do what he could to make sure it was we got pregnant again, lost that baby for losses. And we were devastated. And I'll be honest with you, I did think what am I being punished what's going on? I don't I don't know. But again, having the right people around you to support you is so important. Because sometimes people during grief just don't even know what to say. And again, that's okay. There is nothing to say there is nothing to say. I think that's the main thing to know. I remember I was in the bathroom one day. And I was talking to a woman who we were in church. I always had problems with this woman. There was just something about her that struck me. I don't know, just off. We did. I struggled with her, you know in Jesus name. But she was in the bathroom, knew I had gone through these several losses. I mean, I and I had just recently gone through a loss. And she came singing into the bathroom and said, Oh my gosh, we are so blessed. The Lord will just not stop blessing us. And we're pregnant again. So that to me. Well, of course, I'm thinking, why isn't he blessing me in the same? Well, what am I doing wrong? Well, that's not how God works. Yes, he blesses people he does. But the things that go wrong don't mean that you've necessarily done something wrong. He's a good guy. So we did look at adoption, we thought, Well, we do want another baby. And you know, maybe we'll look at adoption and all these things. And then we got pregnant again. And it was it was terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying. And we went through the pregnancy. I was a high risk patient. And so I had to get shots to maintain my lining every you know, three times a week, which my husband had to administer, which he kind of liked. It was a little I don't know Anyway, I think it was the pain thing, but that's a whole other story. That's on him. But we made it through that pregnancy. A lot of lot of trouble. Had a little problem at delivery time. Another podcast, but had a beautiful girl. Now it's kind of funny because my daughter's I always expected my daughters to look just like me. You know, will Stephanie's dark skin. Dark here. My oldest daughter is a redhead with fair fair skin so she looks like cuz my mom I mean she is that they actually do look very much like Eric and I great mix of of Eric and I but she looked just like my mom redhead fair skin. And the first thing they said when she was born not it's a girl. It's a boy. It's redhead. What are you having a redhead for? Well, it isn't my family. And then my second daughter was a blonde, fair skin. I thought what the heck, these recessive genes I wanted a little Stephanie. They're amazing. Don't get me wrong. But we had decided, or I should say, I had decided no more babies. I am done with babies. And it was just too emotionally difficult to get pregnant to stay pregnant. It was just too much work. And so I had decided happy with the two little girls, I'm good. What I didn't know is my husband really did want another baby boy or girl didn't matter. Just wanted another baby. But he wasn't going to say anything to me, because he really wanted to honor the fact that pregnancies were really emotionally hard. For me. I loved being pregnant. I love that feeling. But they were emotionally difficult. And so he didn't say anything. And I can't even remember how we started to have the conversation. But we did. And he shared with me that he did want another baby. But he understood if I didn't. And I said, Well, here's what I will do. I will I will pray about it. And so that's what I did. And I swear I always say, you know, people are like, hey, wouldn't it be great if God texted you, I got a postcard from God. I'm going to tell you that right now. So I prayed about it. And the next day I got in the mail, a postcard that said, thinking about having another baby. Hilarious, hilarious, God. So still prayed about it. And then I said, Alright, here's the deal. We know that my lining doesn't get thick enough to sustain a pregnancy. So let's go get an ultrasound. If my lining is thick enough, which I knew it would not be, we will talk about having another baby I wasn't even ready to commit to we will have another baby. We'll talk about it. Now. In the meantime, we had gone to a funeral of all places, and the whole family was there. My daughters were there. My mom was there. And I don't remember Eric being there. He may not have been there. But my daughter's and my mom were there. And this woman walked by who I have never seen in my entire life, have not seen sense, walked by and looked at my children and said, Where did you get the redhead and the blonde? Now, I will tell you, we're talking about grief and what not to say we've kind of gone on a bit of a tangent. But here's the other thing that you shouldn't say, don't walk up to a woman in a grocery store or a man and say, Where did you get those children? Or assume something that you do not know? Keep your mouth shut? Don't touch women's bellies. Don't do all those things. Nany have been this, okay. That's what I'm saying. So, this woman approached me someone I have never seen and said, Your boy, you're next child will have dark hair and look just like you. Now, I was I was blown away because I knew that we were thinking and praying about having another baby. My mom, on the other hand, had no idea. She was furious with this woman because she was like, okay, my daughter doesn't do pregnancies. Well, I can't believe she said that. I know she's emotionally exhausted by this. She's done having babies. So she was not happy. My mom had no idea that we had been talking and praying about it. And we went to get an ultrasound and see if the lining was thick enough. And God bless the ultrasound attendant. She said, Hey, I've never seen your lining thicker, and you're ovulating right now. All right, guys, you don't have to listen to this part. But she told us to go and do what you need to do to make it happen. So we did and then I got really sick with like the flu like it influenza and I couldn't breathe and I was coughing and all that stuff. So one time one time and will was born. jet black hair looks good. Just like me, and a boy. I don't know, I don't know what that means. But I got a postcard from God. I do know that. And I'm very grateful for that boy. Now, here's what I will tell you. I did have three healthy children. But the losses that I sustained, that grief doesn't go away. You don't replace babies with another one. And I believe that I have four babies and haven't danced on what Jesus waiting for me when I get there. But grief is grief is grief, and we need to feel it. And here's the other thing I will tell you those last two babies that I lost, I wasn't drinking. I had quit drinking by that point. And I allowed God to walk me through that pain. And it was so different. Because you have to grieve losses. And if you don't grieve it right, then you will grieve it at some point, you will grieve that loss. And so then I was doubly grieving. After I got sober. People still said stupid things. People still did stupid things. But I knew where my support was, I knew where my support system was. Now, I think sometimes people look at miscarriages or stillbirths, or things like that, sometimes very different than a loss of a child. And I understand that. But remember that when a mom loses a baby, it's a loss. Be mindful. So when we're talking about grief in other areas, somebody loses a child, God forbid, somebody loses a parent, somebody loses a spouse. Don't be afraid to give them love and support. You don't need to say anything profound. You don't need to give them a scripture that will make them feel better. Guess what? It's not your job. To make them feel better. You don't need to do it. So be like my friend, go in and say, What do you need? Do you want to talk not want to cry? Or laugh? You get to choose because I'm here for you. I have nothing to say. Because there are no words. I'm just here to love you.

Unknown: 22:47

That's being a supportive friend or family member. We don't have to have all the answers. In fact, we won't have all the answers. So if you have someone in your life who's grieving.

Stephanie Olson: 23:07

Just be with them to grieve. And if you're grieving, find a soft, strong support system that can help you through it. Because it's hard. On the same token, if you know someone who has lost a family member lost a child or lost a loved one. Don't be afraid to bring that person up in conversation later on. A lot of times people think gosh, I I won't, I won't read. I don't want to make them remember, guess what they haven't forgotten. They have not forgotten. So by bringing up a loved one is honoring that person. Honor them, honor the person that is lost, honor the person that you love. And be a supportive friend and a supportive family member and give people the support they need not the words, not the profound words, not the scriptures, not those things. Just be there. Let's give them your presence. That's what I needed. So, on that note, thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. Please share with anyone you think will benefit from this podcast.